Edward Lee - Slither

"It's just a neo-Judeo-Christian attitude, that's all," he dismissed. "Quasi-existential dynamics-and if there really is a hell, you can bet that Sartre and Nietzsche are there. We'll only find out who's right when we die; until then, there's only faith."

Interesting gobbledygook, but Nora thought about that. If God exists, where will I stand in the end? she wondered with a chill. I'm not a bad person, but am I really a good person?

And if there isn't a God… does that really mean nothing matters? The ideas frustrated her, even as she unconsciously felt her cross beneath the swimsuit's fabric. She looked for any escape. "You're covering a lot of bases today," she pointed out. "Now you're talking heavy theology and five minutes ago, you were telling me about how you're going to connive Annabelle into thinking you're a virgin just to get laid."

"But lust is innate," he responded. "God forgives all."

Nora smirked. "I've had enough sex-talk and Godtalk." She got up and brushed sand off her skin. "Now I'm going to do something that really matters."

"What's that?"

"Catch lobsters."

(I)

Ruth hadn't felt this awful… ever. She awoke in the woods, and after a minute of thinking through a catastrophic headache, she remembered: I fell asleep in the shed last night, didn't I?

Yes. She and Jonas had gotten high on some of his potent weed, and had made love in that little shed. He'd gone back to the boat but…

I stayed, she knew. I slept on the floor-I'm positive.

And if she'd slept on the floor…

How did she wind up in the woods?

When she leaned up, more shock hit her: she was still naked. She almost shrieked when she brushed some bugs off her thighs and stomach, then thought Fuck! and flicked a slimy tree frog out of her belly button. Dismay shot her head around; then she saw that she lay less than fifty feet from the shed. Sunlight struggled down through high branches. The door to the shed remained open.

My clothes must still be in there, she realized. She wiped sweat off her brow and smacked her lips. Yuck! Her mouth tasted dry and stale, and her stomach squirmed to remind her how hungry she was. Jonas's asskicking pot always leaves some ass-kicking munchies. She was probably dehydrated, too. In this heat? Even last night it didn't feel as though the temperature had dropped below eighty. And I slept in it. In the fuckin' woods?

She must've been so stoned, she'd tried to walk back to the boat, but then passed out. It was the only explanation. When she looked down more closely at herself, it almost seemed as if she'd been laid out deliberately: legs spread wide, arms out, flat on her back and nude. But when she tried to get up-

"Oww! Fuck!"

Her hands flew to her bare heels, which suddenly barked in pain when she'd dragged them across the ground.

Her heels were scuffed bloody, and her buttocks and bottoms of her thighs sparkled in pain, too.

What the fuck happened to me?

She helped herself up, blinking her confusion through the headache. Now her eyes scanned back toward the shed and she saw two lines coming from the doorway and ending-

Exactly where her heels had been.

"This is fucked up! I didn't pass out in the fuckin' woods! Somebody dragged me here! They dragged me out of the shed and left me!"

But who? And why?

Jonas? Slydes? Why would they do that? Or maybe one of those nature photographers, she thought, but that didn't make sense either.

Then she thought again of her position. Like she'd been deliberately laid out spread legged-in wait of something.

Like bait, came the next, odder thought. Somebody left me here on purpose…

The rustling chopped off her remaining thoughts. Just a few feet away, she noticed leaves moving on the ground. I don't need this fuckin' shit!

She ran back to the shed and slammed the rickety door.

"Fuck!" she exclaimed yet again.

Ruth's less than complex mind crapped out on further contemplations. Dread and terror left her winded. We just need to get the fuck off this fuck-hole shit-bird island, was about the most sophisticated assessment she could make of her situation.

And whatever had been outside rustling beneath the leaves…

Ruth didn't think about it.

The heat inside the shed wrung more sweat from her pores, which plipped like rain on the dry wood floor, leaving dots. Fuck! You could cook pizzas in here! Her marijuana hangover hindered her as she pulled her shorts and top back on. It was so hot she paused a moment and leaned against the wall.

And noticed that the spots her sweat had made on the floor-

Ruth stared.

– were moving.

She steadied herself, squinting.

Her vision shifted further: dehydration, fatigue, mental trauma, and now the oppressive heat all conglomerating. Was she seeing double?

More… spots seemed to be converging on the spots that her sweat had left. The more she stared, the more clear it became.

The spots were moving.

Fuckin' Jonas! He must've laced that pot with PCP or opium!

Ruth needed to know that; she needed an explanation that her mind could fathom. So she walked shakily to the middle of the floor, put her hands on her knees, and leaned over. She opened her eyes as wide as she could, and focused.

Some of the spots weren't drops of sweat. They were beetles or something-snot yellow with tiny red dots.

They encroached on the sweat drops, as if to drink. Then some of them began to inch toward Ruth's feet.

"Fuck this shit, man!" she declared and stumbled out of the shed.

The outside air revived her. Then, on her first stride toward the exit trail-

Flump!

Ruth fell flat on her face.

No profanity now could allay her frustration, no variations of her favorite transitive verb that began with the letter F. Instead, she sobbed loudly, pounding her small fists into the dirt. Dust from the ground stuck to her perspiry skin, smudged her cheeks, arms, and legs, while bits of leaves and other detritus hung in her blond hair. She looked like the Wild Woman of the Forest… save for the notion that the Wild Woman of the Forest probably wouldn't have breast implants or a cotton-candy-pink T-shirt that read YUCK FOO!

Ruth, in essence, was having perhaps the worst day of her life just now. For all she knew Jonas and Slydes had raped her in the woods last night and left the island without her. She felt nauseated, hungover, andcome to think of it-her… private regions hurt. She was hallucinating yellow bugs, and to top it all off, she'd just tripped and fallen flat on her face.

Finally, she cut loose and bellowed, "Fuck-fuck-fuckfuck-fuck-fuck-Fuck!" at the top of her lungs.

The forest fell silent; the emotional release putting her a little more at ease. But an added confusion slapped her in the face when she looked to see what she'd tripped over…

A portable camping grill.

The grill lay tipped over, and several overcooked hamburgers lay in the dirt, being feasted on by ants.

A portable grill?

And at the corner of the shed sat a cooler quite different from the one Slydes kept on the boat. Ruth kneed her way over, opened it, and discovered several bottles of beer and wine coolers.

This stuff hasn't been here that long…

The last thing Ruth needed was another mystery, but the identity of whoever owned the cooler became immaterial in the next second, when something that could only have been a hand slammed down on the back of her head and grabbed her hair.

She shrieked like a smoke alarm. The unseen figure shoved her face in the dirt and sat on her back, pinning her, and whoever he was seemed agitated by the noise she was making because each time she shrieked, he smacked her head into the ground.

Ruth only screamed a few times.